Janus Trap. James Axler

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      Brigid didn’t let her finish the sentence

      Her booted foot kicked high, thumping Skylar hard in the chest, knocking her backward once more until she slammed into the side of the desk. “The curious cat was killed, Skylar,” she said.

      “What’s got into you?” Skylar wailed fearfully, struggling to keep her balance as she was forced against the desk.

      “Never liked you,” Brigid said again, leaping forward, her hands closing around Skylar’s throat. “Nosy and arrogant because you know how to operate computers. That’s not a talent, Skylar. That’s barely even an ability.”

      “P-please,” Skylar croaked as Brigid’s grip tightened around her neck, “Miss Baptiste. I think something is very wrong with you…please try to…”

      She could tell that Brigid wasn’t listening, and she struggled vainly to loosen the grip of the taller woman. There was a dark, determined look in Brigid’s narrowed eyes, a horrible joy in the set of her smiling jaw. Skylar thought that she knew what it was—bloodlust.

      Janus Trap

      Outlanders^®

      James Axler

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      Special thanks to Rik Hoskin for his contribution to this work.

      I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn’t know where to die.

      —Antonio Gramsci, 1891–1937.

      The Road to Outlands—From Secret Government Files to the Future

      Almost two hundred years after the global holocaust, Kane, a former Magistrate of Cobaltville, often thought the world had been lucky to survive at all after a nuclear device detonated in the Russian embassy in Washington, D.C. The aftermath—forever known as skydark—reshaped continents and turned civilization into ashes.

      Nearly depopulated, America became the Deathlands—poisoned by radiation, home to chaos and mutated life forms. Feudal rule reappeared in the form of baronies, while remote outposts clung to a brutish existence.

      What eventually helped shape this wasteland were the redoubts, the secret preholocaust military installations with stores of weapons, and the home of gateways, the locational matter-transfer facilities. Some of the redoubts hid clues that had once fed wild theories of government cover-ups and alien visitations.

      Rearmed from redoubt stockpiles, the barons consolidated their power and reclaimed technology for the villes. Their power, supported by some invisible authority, extended beyond their fortified walls to what was now called the Outlands. It was here that the rootstock of humanity survived, living with hellzones and chemical storms, hounded by Magistrates.

      In the villes, rigid laws were enforced—to atone for the sins of the past and prepare the way for a better future. That was the barons’ public credo and their right-to-rule.

      Kane, along with friend and fellow Magistrate Grant, had upheld that claim until a fateful Outlands expedition. A displaced piece of technology…a question to a keeper of the archives…a vague clue about alien masters—and their world shifted radically. Suddenly, Brigid Baptiste, the archivist, faced summary execution, and Grant a quick termination. For Kane there was forgiveness if he pledged his unquestioning allegiance to Baron Cobalt and his unknown masters and abandoned his friends.

      But that allegiance would make him support a mysterious and alien power and deny loyalty and friends. Then what else was there?

      Kane had been brought up solely to serve the ville. Brigid’s only link with her family was her mother’s red-gold hair, green eyes and supple form. Grant’s clues to his lineage were his ebony skin and powerful physique. But Domi, she of the white hair, was an Outlander pressed into sexual servitude in Cobaltville. She at least knew her roots and was a reminder to the exiles that the outcasts belonged in the human family.

      Parents, friends, community—the very rootedness of humanity was denied. With no continuity, there was no forward momentum to the future. And that was the crux—when Kane began to wonder if there was a future.

      For Kane, it wouldn’t do. So the only way was out—way, way out.

      After their escape, they found shelter at the forgotten Cerberus redoubt headed by Lakesh, a scientist, Cobaltville’s head archivist, and secret opponent of the barons.

      With their past turned into a lie, their future threatened, only one thing was left to give meaning to the outcasts. The hunger for freedom, the will to resist the hostile influences. And perhaps, by opposing, end them.

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Prologue

      In a broken air vent, in a hidden bunker beneath the Caucasus Mountains, a woman dressed in strips of material was waking up.

      Almost two days before, when she had awakened to find herself beaten and bloody on the floor of the bunk room, Cloud Singer had immediately engaged the implant at the base of her neck and tried to dreamslice. But, to her horror, nothing had happened, no jump, no transferral, nothing.

      She had strained her ears, listening for a trace of the singing bull roarer, its promising salvation, but all had been silent. Then, as she listened, she had heard voices, people in the underground complex, walking along the corridor, and the beam of their flashlight danced in the open doorway.

      She had moved quickly, despite the pain from all over her body, clambering into the broken vent on the wall of the bunk room, the one that Kane had shot to pieces. Inside, she had hidden herself from sight while her enemies went about their cleanup operation, sweeping the bunker for stragglers, but failing to find her.

      And she had tried, periodically, to dreamslice, to step out of Realworld and into the Dreaming, but nothing had happened.

      Tucked there, in the absolute darkness, beside the room full of skeletons, she had slowed her breathing and willed herself into a healing coma, her heart beating at an eighth of its usual pace.

      Almost two days later, conscious once more, she found herself alone.

      Cloud Singer blinked, bringing her electrochemical polymer lenses to life on the nictitating membranes that slotted over her eyes, granting her night vision in the pitch-dark bunker.

      On silent feet, she walked from the bunk room, checking each doorway in turn, confirming her suspicion that she was totally alone in the complex. Alone except for the corpse of Neverwalk, a bloody ruin where his neck had been.

      With none of her strike team left, no access to the Dreaming, Cloud Singer was utterly alone.

      Alone